pyuser583

Yeah this is nice - also helps with grepping dump files.

Oh gosh the ints v uuids debate for pks. This is worse than vim v eMacs or brackets v braces.

This is one of the funniest things I ever read

I thought it had a pure oxygen atmosphere to prevent the bends? Why is it dangerous?

I’m sorry but I’d like specifics - there are too many environmentalists hand-waving.

This is a well established playbook - it was used with nuclear. It’s being used with oil transport.

It’s literally the same script.

I realized that 20 years after my last Latin class, I can sight read it pretty well, until I hit the word “ut” then everything falls apart.

It was an anecdote from “First In.” It is about the CIA officers who arrived first in Afghanistan: with gigantic bags of cash.

Fluctuating premiums based on risk factors defeat the purpose of a policy.

From 1000 to 1300 the population of Europe doubled, mostly from improvements in agriculture.

In all fairness, this is exactly why insurance was invented: unreliable shipping. You just took out a policy, and the shipment didn’t make it you took the payout.

It creates a system that diminishes risk, but simultaneously diminishes incentives for improvement.

Living off redistributed surplus is exactly what happens when you don’t work.

I’ve been there: no job = food pantry + food stamps.

I live in a nice area. Since we are wealthy, our local economy has quite a bit of surplus. The food pantries regularly have organic and high end food. Plenty of people with money go there just because - why not?

The poorer parts of the county don’t have as much surplus, so they’re food pantries had old cheese and peanut butter.

I’m not sure what the solution is.

Feeding a family on an acre is a bit like making pencils one at a time.

People substitute very quickly and happily.

I remember food shortages during Covid. Nowhere near as bad as toilet paper shortages.

I can go without chocolate for a few days. Weeks, maybe. But if it becomes months, I get crabby.

I’m from a historically agricultural state, and live in the farming area. Government interventions are regularly mocked - always have been.

Demand for food plummets when it is no longer fresh. Throwing food away is politically toxic. This creates major problems.

As people get richer they don’t want more food, they want better food. Fresher and more meat based. Which is fine. But means the food when you talk about food “that which prevents us from starving to death” you are quite divorced from actual demand.

People don’t price food based on its anti-starvation capabilities.

Either they follow traditional diets, or they buy for convenience (highly processed), or they are health nuts who live off rice, beans, and kale.

Nobody is trying to maximize calories. Very few people are trying to match their food intake to their amount physical exertion.

All these ontological and teleological models are divorced from how food is actually valued: market “taste” is insanely important under normal circumstances.

Our agriculture sector won’t succeed if it’s based around preventing famine.

With AI.

I read a book by a CIA officer. A big part the job is carrying around tons of cash for shady people. It’s understood that if you take the cash for yourself, you go to prison.

The ironic thing is the money usually goes missing. It gets given to some VIPs brother, who is supposed to give it to VIP, but doesn’t.

The important thing is it not go missing while you are watching it. It can go missing later - just not on your watch.

Tech involves tradeoffs. Famously, horses attracted vermin, which attracted disease. Cities were unable to keep up population without migration because so many people died from disease.

Cars fixed that. And introduced other problems. But there are always trade offs.

Things have been getting better over time. Good enough for me.

Why were hey called Jacobites? I associate the name with the Free Church of Scotland.

I heard it tries to compensate for the expensiveness of living in Alaska - and fails.

The real source of “economic equality” is a ready supply of jobs for blue collar workers - oil, fishing, tourism, etc.

And the fact poor people leave, and don’t come in the first place.

I’ve heard similar things about Sweden: social welfare to avoid massive deaths by ice.

What’s the prefered uuid these days?

This is what gets me - entropy is hard, but not that hard. I get it goes against everything a computer is built to do, but so does telling time.

SGI was pretty amazing. I know some folks who worked there - Cray too. There’s a loyalty that just doesn’t exist any more - and arguably isn’t earned anymore.

Oh wow that’s really amazing. What’s the source - I love Von Neumann.

I’m guessing it’s below market rates. Silicon Valley and all.

That may be true, but I find Australian accents the most beautiful.

Matrix isn’t cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of punk. Think bikers, street gangs, heavy metal. The first two Terminators.

By the time Matrix came around, punk was out. Not a bad thing. Things come and go.

But sadly the cyber and punk parts got confused: Steampunk and Biopunk, which aren’t very punky.

I’m usually not a genre stickler, but I just got done reading anthology of early 80s cyberpunk punk. It was shocking. Really shocking. It was more about heavy metal and raves than technology.

I just want it to cook and clean.

Learn how to calculate longitude and latitude by eyesight using the Ptolemaic system.

Then add a telescope or sextant.

This is lots of fun, if you’re into that sort of thing.

It sounds weird there is a pro-rat constituency.

Had this problem with my kid - social media caused serious mental health issues. Toxic content in kids areas.

But taking it away was worse.

Once “not using it” isn’t an option, government intervention becomes reasonable.